Don't squander the gold of your days making a shrine of cricket videos, trying to improve the hopeless failure, giving your life away to the Blockys, the Devciches and the Weerasundaras! Surrender your devout little cricketing heart to the inured agribusinessman.

Andre still doesn't really have a single plausible remedy, "if you truly love your cricket and you're in NZ...leave!" is almost the message. He does quite well in this interview in calling out How and Papps (could've added Fulton) as examples of guys who rose, got found out, then declined rapidly, seemingly just because of a wearying, same old peanuts, same old monkeys NZ scene.

Andre still doesn't really have a single plausible remedy, "if you truly love your cricket and you're in NZ...leave!" is almost the message. He does quite well in this interview in calling out How and Papps (could've added Fulton) as examples of guys who rose, got found out, then declined rapidly, seemingly just because of a wearying, same old peanuts, same old monkeys NZ scene.

"I didn't get a fair chance", damn straight, one of the tragedies of NZ cricket, one friggen test with his FC record is beyond a joke.

Andre still doesn't really have a single plausible remedy, "if you truly love your cricket and you're in NZ...leave!" is almost the message. He does quite well in this interview in calling out How and Papps (could've added Fulton) as examples of guys who rose, got found out, then declined rapidly, seemingly just because of a wearying, same old peanuts, same old monkeys NZ scene.

It definitely would've been interesting to see how well he'd perform at test level compared to guys like O'Brien, Arnel etc.

"I didn't get a fair chance", damn straight, one of the tragedies of NZ cricket, one friggen test with his FC record is beyond a joke.

Just a terrific interview. And he is swinging my opinion. Maybe we should stop playing List A cricket and play an additional round of FC in its place.

We can still play International 50/50 cricket and we will probably still do fine at it even if we don't do it at domestic level.

It looks like we spent about 40 days playing List A last season. That would indeed allow for 5 extra FC rounds. Adams commented that we also would need more overseas players in NZ just to give fresh people to play against and to test yourself against.

No agreed, 10 rounds of the Ford Trophy shouldn't really be subsidised if it's not even close to standing on its own feet. Perhaps a little tricky for NZC to completely marginalise 50-over cricket ATM seeing how much they want 2015 to be a success.

Maybe we send any guys of 50-over importance to the rosters of Ryobi Cup sides, and that'd be it. That's the sole 50-over avenue. Rather than pushing the Shield out to 15 rounds (which I think would prove cripplingly expensive) I'd probably take Andre's advice and try to fill the space created with more exotic challenges. Proper emerging player tours to NZ each February that actually get a bit of a spotlight thrown on them.

Why would 5 extra rounds of FC cost more than playing list A over the same time period Kippax? I think a major knock on having 15 games is that it would get boring playing peter fulton three times in a year.

Also I have started a thread on this b4 but I haven't heard your views. What do you think is the right number of FC teams for the plunket shield? 6 or 8?

If it was 8 then we could have 14 FC games each season if everyone played each other twice. Would just hope that the talent pool is good enough to support an additional two teams. If you listen to Howsie it sounds like there is a wealth of youngsters who can't get a look in because the incumbents are holding down positions in teams for years.

I suspect the Wellington region could not supply any more FC standard players just from conversations we have had but perhaps other regions could.

Probably the finances would scuttle the whole thing I would imagine as there is not that much money in the game.

Howsie will tell you ND have enough depth to be their own test nation tbf.

Originally Posted by Bahnz

I need u like Henry Nicholls needs batting school
He was terrible in that series
I need u like Ross Taylor needed to be fit
He's way better than Henry Nicholls
And now all I can think about is your smile
and that ****** test series too
Losing to Australia sucked and I miss you

Hmm, I doubt you could do 15 more FC matches at less than double the cost of 34 List As. Playing full rounds in and around Lincoln puts five teams on the road, helps the budget in other ways if all teams tolerate it.

Remember when they bumped it down to eight rounds a few years back? They did a run-down in an article of just how much each four-dayer costs. I can remember it sort of peeved me at the time seeing most of the new entrants to NZ test side were coming in via completely arbitrary ****. A Tuffey injury giving Styris a run at 8, Hadlee liking the look of H Marshall in a Buchi Babu tournament and then terorism fears giving him his ODI chance, Bond averaging about 30 for Canty until a crazy-even-for-us injury crisis, Butler because he got keepers taking it reverse-cup occasionally and Bond had got the country drunk on pace.

If I were to create two more teams, and it isn't going to happen due to insufficient talent - I would create a north harbour team and have players north of the bridge and also from northland play for north harbour instead of ND.

And a second Canterbury team taking Cantab 2nd xI players and the whole Tasman/Nelson area would play for this second Cantab team as well instead of CD.

HRV cup would have to be one round robin of 7 games followed by playoffs of all eight teams. With the highest ranked teams getting the home games and the gate revenue.

If I were to create two more teams, and it isn't going to happen due to insufficient talent - I would create a north harbour team and have players north of the bridge and also from northland play for north harbour instead of ND.

And a second Canterbury team taking Cantab 2nd xI players and the whole Tasman/Nelson area would play for this second Cantab team as well instead of CD.

HRV cup would have to be one round robin of 7 games followed by playoffs of all eight teams. With the highest ranked teams getting the home games and the gate revenue.

Yeah quite good splits. I think Bay of Plenty can just about command their own team the way cricket talent and population trends seem to be going. Tauranga's tripled in size over the last 20 years.

Splitting Northern Districts up would be the only possible way it could work IMO, in terms of keeping the quality up anyway. Northland, Counties, Hamilton, Waikato Valley, Bay of Plenty and Poverty Bay make up ND. You could make Northland and Counties part of Auckland and create two teams out of there fairly comfortably imo, then have Hamilton and Bay of Plenty run by themselves and have the Valley merge with Hamilton and Poverty Bay with Bay of Plenty. Neither of the two teams would provide much in terms of talent to either Hamilton or BOP but geographically it would just make sense.